Janet C.E. Watson - Böcker

This volume is the result of collaborative work conducted with a number of native speakers of the languages over several years. The volume presents a comparative cultural glossary of 345 head terms, which are given in the six Modern South Arabian languages: Group I: Mehri, Harsusi and Bathari; Group II: Sheret, Sokotri and Hobyot. The groupings are linguistically rather than geographically based. The list adapts and expands Claire Bowern's basic word list of 224 terms (Bowern 2008). Our word list was developed by the Documentation and Ethnolinguistic Analysis of Modern South Arabian (DEAMSA) team in collaboration with native speakers over a period of five years. Significant dialectal variants are noted for Mehri, Sheret, Hobyot and Sokotri, but these are by no means exhaustive. In many cases, the head words are 'umbrella terms' for clusters of forms, each of which has its own more precise semantic colouring. To demonstrate this clustering of forms, for each language the volume provides a selection of the many different forms offered by speakers for some head words.

This book is the first comprehensive account of the phonology and morphology of Arabic. It is a pioneering work of scholarship, based on the author's research in the region. Arabic is a Semitic language spoken by some 250 million people in an area stretching from Morocco in the West to parts of Iran in the East. Apart from its great intrinsic interest, the importance of the language for phonological and morphological theory lies, as the author shows, in its rich root-and-pattern morphology and its large set of guttural consonants. Dr Watson focuses on two eastern dialects, Cairene and San'ani. Cairene is typical of an advanced urban Mediterranean dialect and has a cultural importance throughout the Arab world; it is also the variety learned by most foreign speakers of Arabic. San'ani, spoken in Yemen, is representative of a conservative peninsula dialect. In addition the book makes extensive reference to other dialects as well as to classical and Modern Standard Arabic.The volume opens with an overview of the history and varieties of Arabic, and of the study of phonology within the Arab linguistic tradition. Successive chapters then cover dialectal differences and similarities, and the position of Arabic within Semitic; the phoneme system and the representation of phonological features; the syllable and syllabification; word stress; derivational morphology; inflectional morphology; lexical phonology; and post-lexical phonology. The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic will be of great interest to Arabists and comparative Semiticists, as well as to phonologists, morphologists, and linguists more generally.

Filling a gap in the literature currently available on the topic, this edited collection is the first examination of the interplay between urbanization, language variation and language change in fifteen major Arab cities. The Arab world presents very different types and degrees of urbanization, from well established old capital-cities such as Cairo to new emerging capital-cities such as Amman or Nouakchott, these in turn embedded in different types of national construction. It is these urban settings which raise questions concerning the dynamics of homogenization/differentiation and the processes of standardization due to the coexistence of competing linguistic models. Topics investigated include: History of settlementThe linguistic impact of migrationThe emergence of new urban vernacularsDialect convergence and divergenceCode-switching, youth language and new urban cultureArabic in the DiasporaArabic among non-Arab groups.Containing a broad selection of case studies from across the Arab world and featuring contributions from leading urban sociolinguistics and dialectologists, this book presents a fresh approach to our understanding of the interaction between language, society and space. As such, the book will appeal to the linguist as well as to the social scientist in general.

Filling a gap in the literature currently available on the topic, this edited collection is the first examination of the interplay between urbanization, language variation and language change in fifteen major Arab cities. The Arab world presents very different types and degrees of urbanization, from well established old capital-cities such as Cairo to new emerging capital-cities such as Amman or Nouakchott, these in turn embedded in different types of national construction. It is these urban settings which raise questions concerning the dynamics of homogenization/differentiation and the processes of standardization due to the coexistence of competing linguistic models. Topics investigated include: History of settlementThe linguistic impact of migrationThe emergence of new urban vernacularsDialect convergence and divergenceCode-switching, youth language and new urban cultureArabic in the DiasporaArabic among non-Arab groups.Containing a broad selection of case studies from across the Arab world and featuring contributions from leading urban sociolinguistics and dialectologists, this book presents a fresh approach to our understanding of the interaction between language, society and space. As such, the book will appeal to the linguist as well as to the social scientist in general.

First Published in 1996. This is a lexicon of Arabic horse terminology covering Egyptian, Bedouin and Classical Arabic. The Egyptian data for this book were collected in Cairo between October 1982 and September 1983, December 1983, December 1984, and March to April 1988. Most of this time the author spent exercising and training Egyptian and European horses, and later, teaching horse riding.

Yemeni Poetry on the Frontline investigates popular literary responses to conflict in the different regions of Yemen, comparing responses to, and expressions of, traditional conflict with those to the new externally fuelled conflict.In its engagement with diasporic Yemeni communities in the UK, the book explores how storytelling and poetry might heighten and enhance both political and public awareness of the situation in Yemen, and lead to wider cultural understanding of diasporic and refugee communities in the UK. The novelty lies in the focus on literary expressions of conflict and conflict resolution, and the bringing together of projects dealing with the diverse regions of Yemen.This book will primarily appeal to scholars in Yemeni poetry, Arabic literature, Arabic dialectology, and anthropological linguistics.